Guild Wars 2

I am noticing since a reroll of my engineer (didn’t like my race) that Rifles are doing far less DPS than my dual pistols. I am not past lvl 10 so no traits to concern myself with nor have I enhanced my gear… still straight off the dead bodies of my enemies… (toughness and power). However, i am noticing despite Pistols being a condition build type and rifles power, my pistols are dropping mobs faster than my rifle and they are same lvled weapons. Is it just me or is anybody else noticing that as well?

So I have not upgraded any gear either way, geared for power and toughness and still find pistols better dps? Am I doing something wrong? I really wanted to roll rifle on this toon but can’t seem to drop mobs fast enough before getting creamed (ie vetrans, when my pistols do the job with life to spare.)

Pretty sure pistols just straight up do more dmg. Rifle is much more about control. That said, jump shot hits like a truck.

As you get better gear it will even out and some people would even argue riffle gets better.

You are level 10, wearing mismatched gear…it’s far too early to worry about which weapon outputs more damage.

Go into the Mist, test them out there and you’d be able to get a far better idea.

Rifle is for good damage at long range and very high burst damage at short range. Pistol is more for higher sustained damage at short to mid range.

Rifle is ideal for burst oriented PvP. Pistol is for more defensive/tankish PvP. Grenades and bombs will outdo either by a large margin for solo PvE.

Noticing how hard jumpshot hits not seeing the control? Net shot? Maybe i am not using it properly then…

I personally like the rifle better in general. It synergizes with turrets a lot better than pistols or pistol/shield, gives me a short cooldown immobilize (which is GODLY in wvw), as well as a short cooldown knockback (again, GODLY in wvw – especially near ledges), and the freedom to both fight close range as well as long range.

Pistols are disappointing to me for various reasons. The first one being that my engi only ever uses one of them in animation, and the other that the ‘1’ and ‘2’ skills are rather lackluster to say the least. It doesn’t help that the actual useful pistol skills have cooldowns reaching up at 30 seconds (and for what, an AoE cripple?).

I’m an Asura, so I can’t even see pistols 99% of the time. The rifle is more fun for gameplay, strategy and looks

Not all weapon sets are created equal to others. It’s how they mesh for you and with your other chosen skills.

It’s the question of condition damage, power, and crit damage. There was a very thorough, well researched, and detailed post about this in general a while back.

Thing is, pistols scale linearly with condition damage gear. That is to say that if you have + x condition damage gear, your abilities will do:
[total condition damage]=[normal condition damage] + [scaling factor]*[x]
where scaling factor depends on the condition (bleed, poison, burning, confusion).

Rifle scales geometrically with power and exponentially with crit damage. That is to say if you have power y and crit damage modifier z, you will get:

[Total damage]=[base damage] * [some scaling factor] * [y]

Since rifle can easily be traited and geared to give over 50% base crit (over 70% with fury), we also look at crit damage values, which scale with both crit damage z and [Total Damage] calculated above :

[Crit Damage]=[Total Damage]*exponential([Base Crit Dmg]+[z])

To find the estimated values of [Scaling Factor] and [Base Crit Dmg], you’ll actually have to do some digging in the general forums.

Important conclusions from above. Since [Total Damage] scales geometrically with [base damage] as does [Total Crit Damage] implicitly through [Total Damage], [base damage] is extremely important. Rifle has roughly double the base damage of Pistol. Further, abilities like scattershot have another multiplier on top of that.

What this means is that at level 80 with massive attribute gains from traits and gear, rifle scales much better than pistols because all of rifle’s multipliers are geometric or exponential, where as pistols main scaling comes from condition damage which is linear. Yes, pistols scale with power and crit damage as well, but horribly compared to rifle due to roughly having half the base damage.
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DISCLAIMER: The above analysis neglects the effect of toughness. Toughness has a low geometric scaling effect in decreasing damage (compared to the high geometric scaling of power), but toughness does scale geometrically as well. Condition damage ignores that reduction. So a high toughness low health target (like most guardians, and some builds from other classes) may in fact die faster due to conditions. However, this is the exception rather than the rule.

All of the above also explains while flamethrower starts out awesome at low levels, and becomes much worse at higher levels; poor scaling.

Deleted, forum bug prevented editing above post earlier.

rifle will do more dps but only up close.

Thanks- never thought about going into the Mists to check them out…

PotatoOverdose, is there enough data about PvE foes to know which tends to be more effective there? Do they have anything like Toughness, or just lots of hit points? I’m wondering in particular about Dungeon minions and bosses.

PotatoOverdose.6583:

All of the above also explains while flamethrower starts out awesome at low levels, and becomes much worse at higher levels; poor scaling.

Are you sure about this? this might be the case if you have no flamethrower traits, but I started my engineer with hopes of using it, and found its damage to be terrible, and my rifle was out damaging it

But when you got the right traits, flamethrower just rocks, with on crit procs and its sheer number of hits, the flamethrower itself does not do alot of work, but its attack lets it stack conditions/vul/might stacks and since its aoe it does ALOT of damage imo.

lets look at the values from the wiki, just for funzies, I dunno if these are base, or how they work. But, it lists hip shot as 251 damage with a 3/4 second cast time, or 0.75 seconds.

Flamethrower does 490 over 2.25 seconds, this means you get exactly 3 rifle shots in the same time.

Flamethrower also does a 1 second burn after the fact though, for 328 damage, bringing the flamethrowers total damage up to 818, where as rifle looks at 251*3 or 753 over the same time period.

Assuming lets say 50% crit, the flamethrower will crit for 5/10 of its shots on average, where as the rifle lets give it the benefit of the doubt and give it 2/3 because it gets stats, meaning it can have prec on it, lets say its got 60% crit.

Crits are listed as a default 1.5x so ill use that as my basis. This means the flamethrower does 49 damage a hit 10x, meaning it half of these crit, you get 613~ + 328 burn for 941.

the rifle gets 2(251* 1.5) + 251 = 1004

HOWEVER, the flamethrower with traits such as “chance to bleed on crit” and “chance to vul on crit” at the listed values on average per flame jet at 50% crit you get 2-3 vul stacks AND 2-3 bleed stacks, meaning you will in a drawn out fight get more damage from your 1 from a flamethrower then from a rifle.

This is not even counting the might you get from juggernaut.

However, I agree with the rest of your post, as my math even shows, that rifle with crit/power gear just scales REALLY well, However, I think kits in the end are the best weapon choices simply do to the way they function. Though this is not counting blunderbuss/jumpshot which gives the rifle extreme burst versus the flamethrower, But imo flamethrower scales quite well into the later levels with traits and what not. Rifle gets a 10% increase from its trait, where as flamethrower gets a 15% so really if we count that, we might see flamethrower gain a lead? who knows!

I think people should look at kits alot more, yeah they dont give you weapon stats, but they have sheer base damage on their own its pretty crazy!

Yeah. where the two stand varies.

When I leveled engi. I leveled p/p and it sure felt like it as killing faster then rifle.

However, after having a discussion on the two at 80, and going through and testing. it was clear rifle was dealing more damage at 80.

Raw scaling is not the only factor.

P/P
1. .324 power scaling aoe hit .5s CD currently. .648/s
2. .37 power scaling. x5 hits over 1.75s. 1.85power/cd (1.06power/s) 10s CD, 8s with -20%cdr. (.232 over 8s.)
3. .37 power scaling. 4 target bounce. 15/12s CD. In PvE especially it will bounce often. .74 ap .5s cast on 2hit. (.062 over 12s)
4. .305 ap scaling. x3 for melee. .915 .5s cast. 15/12s CD. This is also aoe. (.076 over 12s.)

12s interval. 2 pdv, 1 static, 1 burn.15 explosive shots.
3.7 power from 2 pdv, .74 power from static with a bounce, .915from blowtorch, and 4.86 from explosive shot.
10.215 power scaling. use a level 80 exotic pistol. 1025 max damage. 2000 power vs 2600 armor.
10.215×1025×2000/2600- 8054 direct damage dealt over 12s.

Rifle. 1. .599 power scaling. pierce .75s cd. (.8/s)
3. 1.45 power scaling close. .91 far. 10/8s CD. .5s cast. (.181 over8s close damage)
4. .91 power scaling. self kd interrupts your damage for 1s. 15/12s cd.
5. .82 leap, 1.64 land power scaling. 1.25s duration. 20/16s cd

12s interval.
2.9 power from 2 blunderbuss near, .91 power from overcharged, and 2.48 from rocket jump. (note that a longer interval gets less from this, due to 16s CD, vs 12s of other skills) and 6.589 from 11 hip shots.
12.879 power scaling. level 80 rifle 1205 damage.
12.879×1205×2000/2600=11937.8 direct damage over 12.
Overcharged is also probably a dps loss, if you dont use a stun breaker. Jump hits hard enough that its worth it. although is annoying to use, and can miss often.

Blunderbuss obviously has a nice strong bleed on it as well. and p/p has bleeds, burns, confuse, and venom all adding to damage.
Since base condition damage scales with level, and weapon damage is not a factor, falling behind in gear for your current level probably also enables p/p for dealing more damage at low levels.

Traits such as “increases damage by 5% when target is bleeding” ONLY effect direct damage. vulnerability only effects direct damage as well.

Flamethower as dice dragon stated, looks nice. but when you consider the 2.25s cast time of 1 it becomes much less impressive.
1.43 power over 2.25s or .633/s
Less then both rifle AND pistol autoattack by default. 1s burn at the end. but pistol will have stacked 4s bleeds itself over that duration.
Weapon kit damage at 80 is 969 compared to the afore mentioned 1205 of rifle, and 1025 of pistol. meaning that .633 is even lower as its .633×969, exotic rifle gets 27% more damage from power then flamethower does.

Again, leveling, flamethower will automatically level with you. if you let your rifle fall behind 5-10levels, that flamethower might be much stronger.

Grenades..

g1 is .478×2 .5s cd. .956/cast. or 1.9 power scaling/s
g2 is .524×2 4s cd. 1.048/cast. huge bleeds.

12s duration.
5.92 power from 4 shrapnels,38 power from 20 g1.
43.92×969×2000/2600=32737

Yeah, grenades utterly destroy everything else.
And that wasn’t even with grenadier. Which is also the best trait engis can get. nothing else increases a builds power as much as it does. 30% one trait. juggernaut doesn’t do that for flamethower, coated bullets doesnt for pistols, rifle doesn’t have anything either.
(nor vul stacking x3, bleed stacking x3 ever .5s, or grenade barrage which is also huge etc..)

And yeah, Grenades are op as crap sadly, Flamethrower holds its own, as does rifle/p/p, but really, wanna do damage? get them nades, op as helllll

A few individuals mentioned pve, and grenades.
The thing about grenades (and bombs) is that they scale very well with both power and condition damage. You get the best of both worlds.

Bomb kit, along with the proper defensive traits is amazing in certain dungeons and events. I’ve kited bosses and entire rooms with a modified tpvp bunker build while the rest of the team wiped. Grenade kits do awesome damage against stationary targets. The issue grenades have is that it is very difficult to get them to do 100% damage against a moving target, because the area where the 3 independant aoes for each of the 3 grenades overlap is actually quite small (diameter of 100 units, guesstimate). Outside that area grenades do 2/3 or even 1/3 damage. Bombs, on the other hand, do full damage regardless of where your target is in a given area.

Granted, the moving targets issue is much less of an issue in pve than pvp. But yeah, for pve use Grenades or bombs (or both) for offense. Both rifle and pistol get outclassed by bombs and grenades because bombs and grenades scale with both power and condition.

Edit:
As to flamethrower, get the best damage gear and traits for flamethrower in isle of the mists. Shoot the heavy golem and time how long it takes to kill. Switch to any other weapon: rifle, pistol, grenade, bomb. Run the best build for those against the heavy golem and time how long it takes to kill it. You’ll find that flamethrower looses to all of them. I’ve done the above multiple times and flamethrower tends to loose by a fairly large margin. Shame really….

Yeah, flamethrower is sadly just not very good as a primary damage kit. It is nice for the short CD knockback and fire field and blind, but as your primary damage? Nope, not gonna cut it.

So much to read. Skimmed a few posts but I’ll weigh in a bit:

I use the Rifle. It is not my primary source of damage though. I usually open with spamming my toolbelt skills, then Net Shot, switch to Grenades, spam them to death. If they still live, switch back to rifle, hit Overcharged Shot, Net Shot, wash, rinse, and repeat.

The point of this? I think that the Engineer’s Rifle isn’t meant to be played as a primary source of damage. Sure Blunderbuss is great, and Jump Shot is a HOUSE, but the rifle really shines when used for its control skills. Couple a rifle with Grenade Kit, or Bomb Kit, and you have “such synergy” (as my Asura would say).

I played with pistols for about the first 50 levels of being an engineer. I wasn’t very impressed. I feel like they need something… some of the skills miss, and they just feel… clunky. I am sure they do very well with condition based builds, but I just couldn’t get on board with them. (I almost feel like a condition based Engineer should just be running the Elixir Gun, as it is a wonderful kit that I rarely see my fellow engineers using).

I kinda like flamethrower in PvE for its large and ranged AOE, which is also an autoattack.

PvEing with grenades really feels like a chore. Bombs have a lot of issues with ranged\running mobs. Rifles are ok vs single target, but kinda lame vs groups.

Flamethrower is casual-mode in this regard. Just grab a bunch of mobs, drop healing turret and burn them all simultaneously.

Yeah I too sometimes use FT in PVE. Not because it’s the best because it clearly isn’t. But just because it’s easy. When you are just farming world mobs or something easy like that.

dual-pistol has a solid baseline over rifle. But it scales poorly, at mid-range level rifle starts overtaking pistol because it simply flat out scales better in every possible way.

At lv80 in cond/crit/tough i was getting bigger hits on my Rifle then my Pistol, conditions included. Rifle straigth up damage just scales (much) better.

It might also be the result of conditions just being awefully implemented. They cap, so in large events involving one boss your damage contribution is balls because you get basicly nothing from your conditions.
Direct-damage scales with power, precison, crit-damage, weakness, damage modifiers. Condition damage scales with… condition damage. Nothing else, not even Weakness or +X% dmg done sigils/runes.

And direct-damage is simple. You hit, you hurt and your enemy has one chance to avoid it and thats it. Condition damage can be avoided by the same things as direct-damage (dodge/block/etc) but once applied, it can also be removed.

You’d think with all these disadvantages condition damage has a solid strong point right? Well, it ignores Toughness. And thats about it. It even scales worst in dps.

Terrahero, any idea how well Condition damage compares to direct damage vs the rather tough mobs in dungeons? There you have a max of 4 teammates, so less condition stacking, burst doesn’t matter as much, but I’m not sure whether dungeon mobs have an equivalent to players Toughness and Vitality.

Kozai.8269:

Terrahero, any idea how well Condition damage compares to direct damage vs the rather tough mobs in dungeons? There you have a max of 4 teammates, so less condition stacking, burst doesn’t matter as much, but I’m not sure whether dungeon mobs have an equivalent to players Toughness and Vitality.

Well a good example on overworld, which does not matter much, since loloverworld, but in theory is intreasting.

is rock dogs. Rockdogs take little direct damage, but have about the same HP as other mobs, but they have huge armor. which means conditionsreally melt rock dogs, where as trying to overpower them wont work.

Dunno if there is dungeon mobs like this though.